Assimil as it relates to reading

[aokoye]

I know a lot of people really like Assimil and have had a lot of success using it as a start to their studies. The trouble I've had with it is that it just doesn't hold my attention at all primarily because it seems like there is a lot of focus, at least in the beginning, on dialogues and less so on reading texts. I could, of course, be totally wrong because I admittedly haven't ever made it very far through the Assimil French book that I have.

So I guess my questions are has anyone had trouble with reading things like news articles after using Assimil primarily or exclusively and what have people used as an adjunct to Assimil? What I think I might do is go through Assimil French with Ease and also use Lingvist side by side (I really like Lingvist but I got side tracked and haven't used it for a few months).

Edit: I also need to take a better look at Emk's log.

[sfuqua]

I wish I'd done Spanish for Reading along with assimil. The grammatical explanations in the assimil Spanish books stink, but I've heard that the explanations in the French assimil are better...
There is a French for Reading book that is similar to the Spanish for Reading book...

After Spanish with ease, I was close to reading newspapers independently, but not quite there. I think that SFR would have helped.

[diplomaticus]

I wish I'd done Spanish for Reading along with assimil. The grammatical explanations in the assimil Spanish books stink, but I've heard that the explanations in the French assimil are better...
There is a French for Reading book that is similar to the Spanish for Reading book...

After Spanish with ease, I was close to reading newspapers independently, but not quite there. I think that SFR would have helped.

A friend of mine swore by the Spanish for Reading course and the reviews for it are amazing. It looks like the French one can be had for ~$30 used on Amazon. This led to me looking into the German version, which also has great reviews, but has been out of print since 1960-something. Oh happy news, a new edition is coming out next month:
http://www.amazon.com/German-Reading-Jo ... 0745X/ref=

That is quite exciting. It remains to be seen how much this edition differs from the prior (just updated spellings, or a more substantive update?), but could be a nice thing to start as I approach the end of the passive wave.

Anyway, I agree with you that this is a nice suggestion for aokoye!

[aokoye]

I wish I'd done Spanish for Reading along with assimil. The grammatical explanations in the assimil Spanish books stink, but I've heard that the explanations in the French assimil are better...
There is a French for Reading book that is similar to the Spanish for Reading book...

After Spanish with ease, I was close to reading newspapers independently, but not quite there. I think that SFR would have helped.

That's really good to know. I have a few French for Reading books in my bookshelf that I can choose from so I might go ahead and do that. I do really really like how Lingvist introduces words so really I'll probably be doing Assimil, Lingvist, and one of the French for reading books I have side by side. I have A Short Course in Reading French by Celia Brickman and Reading French in the Arts and Sciences by Edward Stack. The Stack book is impressively dense with lots of exercises and long readings starting from the page 35 but the grammar explanations have much to be desired. The Brickman book isn't as dense and has fewer exercises but she does a very good job with grammar explanations. Neither of them are laid out in the way that the Sandberg books are but I think that's ok given the other resources I have.

[aokoye]

A friend of mine swore by the Spanish for Reading course and the reviews for it are amazing. It looks like the French one can be had for ~$30 used on Amazon. This led to me looking into the German version, which also has great reviews, but has been out of print since 1960-something. Oh happy news, a new edition is coming out next month:
http://www.amazon.com/German-Reading-Jo ... 58510745X/

That is quite exciting. It remains to be seen how much this edition differs from the prior (just updated spellings, or a more substantive update?), but could be a nice thing to start as I approach the end of the passive wave.

Just an FYI, the University of Wisconsin has a book called A Foundation Course in Reading German By Howard Martin online that, while not as robust as the Sandeberg/Windel book, seems pretty good. It's also free (Creative Common's license). It might be a good. There's also Reading German by Coles and Dodd which, having thumbed through it (it's currently in front of me), has a lot of really great grammar explanations along with the readings.

[diplomaticus]

A friend of mine swore by the Spanish for Reading course and the reviews for it are amazing. It looks like the French one can be had for ~$30 used on Amazon. This led to me looking into the German version, which also has great reviews, but has been out of print since 1960-something. Oh happy news, a new edition is coming out next month:
http://www.amazon.com/German-Reading-Jo ... 58510745X/

That is quite exciting. It remains to be seen how much this edition differs from the prior (just updated spellings, or a more substantive update?), but could be a nice thing to start as I approach the end of the passive wave.

Just an FYI, the University of Wisconsin has a book called A Foundation Course in Reading German By Howard Martin online that, while not as robust as the Sandeberg/Windel book, seems pretty good. It's also free (Creative Common's license). It might be a good. There's also Reading German by Coles and Dodd which, having thumbed through it (it's currently in front of me), has a lot of really great grammar explanations along with the readings.[/quote]
It threw me off that the quote option was broken in your quote of me, haha. But thank you for those links. I will check them out.

[aokoye]

Oh wow yeah I really messed up that quote

And now that that's been edited, I've gotta say I love that graduate and PhD students in the US (in the humanities at least) are often required to be able to read at a high level in at least one language other than English (the idea being that they need to be able to read and use sources in other languages). It means that, among other things, there are all of these "X language for reading" books which is useful when your personal weak point is or tends to be reading skills in foreign languages.

[SladeWilson]

A friend of mine swore by the Spanish for Reading course and the reviews for it are amazing. It looks like the French one can be had for ~$30 used on Amazon. This led to me looking into the German version, which also has great reviews, but has been out of print since 1960-something. Oh happy news, a new edition is coming out next month:
http://www.amazon.com/German-Reading-Jo ... 58510745X/

That is quite exciting. It remains to be seen how much this edition differs from the prior (just updated spellings, or a more substantive update?), but could be a nice thing to start as I approach the end of the passive wave.

Just an FYI, the University of Wisconsin has a book called A Foundation Course in Reading German By Howard Martin online that, while not as robust as the Sandeberg/Windel book, seems pretty good. It's also free (Creative Common's license). It might be a good. There's also Reading German by Coles and Dodd which, having thumbed through it (it's currently in front of me), has a lot of really great grammar explanations along with the readings.

The one I know of is German Quickly by April Wilson, which I was planning to use if I ever do pick up German, but I'm open to change my mind on which book to go with now that I know there's more. I'm going to take a look at the Foundation Course though, of course, since it's free.